The present disclosure relates generally to management of information technology resources, and more specifically to a system and method for providing and operating a distributed network monitoring and control system.
As it is generally known, business organizations today face many challenges with regard to management of critical information technology (“IT”) resources. Effective technology resource management must generally include monitoring the operational status and performance of various complex infrastructure resources, such as server systems, server software, and many other types of application software.
To address this general need, businesses deal with many specific associated problems. These include recruiting, training and retaining staff with the appropriate skills. Existing automated tool systems are generally not integrated, and provide large amounts of data without condensing it into usable information. Moreover, existing automated tools have high acquisition costs, and must typically be customized for each customer environment. Such customization results in prolonged integration times before the systems are operational.
In larger organizations, teams of IT personnel are employed for the dedicated purpose of keeping the company's data network operating at an optimal performance level. While effective, this approach introduces a significant amount of overhead to the business. In the case of a small to medium size business (SMB), the same set of information technology management challenges exist, but must typically be addressed without the luxury of an internal team dedicated to infrastructure management.
These problems are exacerbated by the fact that a company's information technology infrastructure must evolve over time to reflect the rapidly changing business landscape. Significant changes in the business landscape require businesses to continually introduce new products and/or services in a timely manner, in order to obtain market share and maintain customer satisfaction. These needs require that a business use a sufficiently flexible information technology management system to allow streamlined deployment of additional hardware and software to conveniently support expanded internal processes related to new or expanded product offerings.
A corporate information technology infrastructure often depends on internet service providers (ISPs), application service providers (ASPs), and co-locators (Co-Los). In this regard, ISPs provide internet connectivity, ASPs provide application licensing and integration, and Co-Los are used for data flow, security, and other infrastructure issues. However, these existing service providers each only generate isolated pieces of information that must be combined with other information in order to determine the root cause of many potentially complex types of problems, such as network performance degradation or failure.
Additionally, existing systems often create inefficiency by causing information overload, without information integration. Existing systems also frequently create a re-active rather than a pro-active management environment, by focusing on detection of problems that have already become apparent. Existing remotely based solutions generally rely heavily on Internet access stability, which may or may not be consistently present. Moreover, deficiencies of existing solutions increase the time and risk associated with the introduction of, and support for, complex customer applications.
For these reasons, it would be desirable to have a system for providing information technology infrastructure management that effectively collects, integrates, analyses and distributes actionable information in a pro-active manner. The system should allow applications to be hosted on the customer premises, thus allowing infrastructure control to remain with the customer, and thereby reducing dependency on the Internet. Additionally, the system should enable the use of pre-packaged monitoring, reporting and security application programs that provide immediate value upon service activation. The system should further enable an infrastructure management provider to be responsible for application program licensing fees, maintenance, patches and upgrades. The system should advantageously provide a single portal through which information may be obtained for multiple, integrated applications, and operate to reduce information from disparate reports, into a concise, actionable form.